MILWAUKEE—Korinthia Klein, smudges and stains on her canvas apron, is wiping maple shavings from her workbench. The sign on the door of her Bay View shop says “Closed.” But clearly she has work to do.

In an economy teetering on recession, Klein’s new venture in an old-world business appears to be striking a chord. With support from her husband, Ian Weisser, Klein is proving that turning one’s passion—in her case, a lifelong love of the violin—into a business can be worth the risk even when the economy balks.

Since it opened in Bay View in January, Korinthian Violins already has shown operating profits in three of its first six months.

“What better to invest in than something you love to do anyway?” said Weisser, who put up 15 months of his military pay from a stint in Iraq to start the business. “And if it pays off and becomes profitable, then well, that’s even better. If Korinthia wants a business for 15, 20, 30 years, it’s something she loves to do, well then, it was worth it. So either way, you can’t lose. It’s just money.”

Klein, 39, began violin lessons at age 8 and finished a four-year apprenticeship as a luthier, a maker of stringed instruments, in 2000. She rents, repairs, sells and makes violins, violas and cellos.

“She’s actually quite a rare bird herself, encompassing almost the full spectrum of the field,” said Brian Derber, the luthier who trained Klein and runs the New World School of Violin Making in Presque Isle. “She’s a talented maker. She’s got a good eye. She’s got good people skills.”

For their part, Klein and Weisser say so far, so good.

“We opened at the beginning of a recession and have done OK right out of the box,” Klein said. “Since the day we opened, somebody comes in every day. We always have something to do.”

Weisser says the business could be profitable on a regular basis early in its second year, sooner than he had projected. A couple of years from now, they hope to have monthly profits up to $2,000 or $3,000.

For now, revenue from rentals—$20 a month for violins and violas, $35 for cellos—covers more than half of the shop’s fixed costs, Weisser says. The shop’s revenue stream also includes repairs and sales of instruments, bows and cases.

“We didn’t take out any debt to start,” Weisser says. Instead, the couple began the business with money they saved from Weisser’s duty in Iraq as a captain in the Army Reserve.

Korinthian Violins occupies what once was a butcher shop in Bay View and still features big display windows and white tiling. Chairs are set as if awaiting a quartet. For children, there’s a floor puzzle, a coloring table and a popcorn machine.

“I wanted to create an environment that wasn’t intimidating, that was friendly, that you could feel free to be able to try things,” said Klein, who grew up with two brothers around her parents’ art gallery outside Detroit.

On a recent Saturday, Klein and Weisser’s children—Aden, 6, Cremona, 4, and Quinn, 19 months—played with customers’ youngsters while the grown-ups took care of business.

While Klein replaced a peg and the tailpiece of the violin that Adrienne Lenz of Waukesha is renting for her daughter, Marissa, 6, Lenz arranged to rent a cello for her other daughter, Emma, 9.

“It’s definitely nice to have an actual violinist helping you,” Lenz said. “At a regular music store, you can have an 18-year-old trombone player sell you strings. So if you have questions, you kind of really have to do your homework on your own.”

Klein adds another customer when a little boy from the neighborhood stops in with his mom. Klein lets him hold a kid-sized instrument, and while he’s running the bow across the strings, Klein recommends a teacher she says is great with young children.

“This place is really personal. I like that about it,” says Carrie Rice, 15, who has brought her family from Mequon to pick up her violin bow. Klein had re-haired it and replaced the leather thumb grip.

Carrie was just accepted into the Milwaukee Youth Symphony and was referred to Klein by her violin teacher. When she mentions to Klein that her Homestead High School orchestra visited Cremona, Italy—home of legendary violin maker Antonio Stradivari—Klein takes out the viola she is making for herself and says she got the spruce for the top of the instrument from Cremona. The back of the viola is maple from where her husband grew up in Oregon.

Before she leaves, Carrie also buys a rubber mute for softening the violin’s sound.

Klein practices a venerable craft that specifies exact materials and precise calculations. She re-hairs bows with the tails of Mongolian horses. She cooks glue from granules of animal hide. The fingerboard is made of ebony, the bridge of maple. There’s traditionally pear wood in the decorative purfling.

“Building and repair is a lot like playing. It’s all on that infinite plane of learning,” Klein says.

The economic tide rises and falls, but for reputable violin shops, demand is steady, said Scott Sleider, a longtime luthier in Wauwatosa who used to be in Bay View.

“I just got an order last week for one of my $14,000 violins, and I’m still working on a one-, two-year backlog,” Sleider said.

To some degree, the business is recession-proof, said Eric Chapman, co-founder of the Violin Society of America and a director of the Chicago School of Violin Making.

“It’s hard economic times, but on the other hand music is one of those international languages, which is not only highly important to people in general, but those in it are really committed to it,” Chapman said.

“Wisconsin is not all that loaded with violin shops, and there’s a lot going on in Milwaukee,” he said. “There should be sufficient business.”

Sleider noted growth in the number of string academies and performance groups around Milwaukee and said there’s plenty of business for luthiers who can build a reputation through their work.

“Ultimately,” Derber said, “it comes down to the individual person, and how motivated they are and how talented they are.”

Klein approaches her business as someone who has had a lot of experience around violin shops both as a customer and as someone who set up, repaired and maintained violins, as she did for about 10 years at Milwaukee’s Classical Strings Inc.

“Everything that comes out of here represents me,” Klein says. But more than a business, she sees it as her calling.

“I get to imagine that I can participate in music even when I’m not around anymore,” Klein says. “We’re all caretakers of these instruments. None of us gets to keep them.”

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